Recently, wireless communication devices have become more and more popular as a method of communicating from one point to another. Cellular Radio is one, and probably the most popular, method of wireless communication. The wireless communication uses different air technology to convey content or application information to the wireless communication devices. The network service providers may use different air technology regionally. The earlier systems as a whole have been focused on providing services to the end users within the limitations of the air technology used. Also, services are tightly coupled with the access network service providers.
However, recently, the need for a network designed with air technology agnostic has risen. The service providers' desire to offer identical services to the end devices regardless of the air technology used. In addition to air technology agnostic need, network service providers wish to support multiple access technologies such as wireless, wireline, LAN networks etc. Also, the end user wishes to receive services from their choice of service providers.
Such requirements led to separation of network. The logical separation of network is taking place for access service provider, network (core) service provider, application or service application provider and infrastructure (transport) service provider. Such network resources are not unlimited. Therefore, network resources must account for traffic flows entering a network. Thus, a definite need for accounting management architecture has arisen that provides scheme and procedure to record network usages for monitoring and billing purpose. Moreover, multiple service providers may need different accounting schemes. Thus, an accounting management of the proposed network should be flexible to capture various metrics for usage from which each service provider can accommodate their billing strategies.